


In Arms

by Hecate



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Gen, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-22 21:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11975274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: They fit together in battle, and Rick thinks he might trust her.He doesn't trust all that many people.





	In Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



He had met her for the first time a few months after her husband died, he had met her in a dark alley and she had a sword in her hand and a mask covering her face. He thinks he took a step back. He can't quite remember. 

It was raining, the water chilling him to the bone, running down the blade of her sword like blood. It was night, too, the meeting dressed up like a movie scene, and there might have been the sound of thunder and the glimpse of lightning high above them.

He had pulled his gun on her; she had drawn her sword up in an impossibly graceful move. Behind him, his men had gathered. He remembers his words, a silly, foolish order for her to put down her weapon. She had ignored it, naturally. Listening to him would come so much later. But he had met her, and back then it was good enough to be a beginning.

~***~

Rick is good at war and he's good at leading his men into it. He doesn't doubt his missions, doesn't fear sacrifice - even when it's not his own life he's laying on the line. He has seen death.

But he has never quite seen a woman like her, grief and murder clinging to her body, a steady hand that maims and kills. But in that alley, after their target found not only Rick and his men but also her, she fights on their side. So he forgets about the body he found her with, the slash across its stomach and the blank eyes, and he searches for the rhythm in her strikes and falls in step with her.

Later, surrounded by the injured and dead, he calls out for her. She doesn't turn around.

It takes him weeks to find out about her, to find her between the buildings and the alleys and the bodies that trail in her wake. It takes him weeks but he _does_ find her. When she attacks, he survives.

Or maybe she lets him live.

He ends up without his gun, hands empty, and he raises his palms and he talks to her like she is a wild animal. She hits him with the blunt side of her blade, the sting sharp and sudden. Still, she doesn't kill him.

He takes his chances, says, "You could work for us."

Behind the mask, he senses her raise an eyebrow.

"Work with us," Rick corrects himself.

"Why would I do that?"

Rick shrugs. "Money and resources to find the men who murdered your husband."

It's her turn to take a step back, her sword hand slowly sinking.

He smiles. "I work for the kind of people who know how to find out things about a person when all you know are pieces of her face and the way she fights."

"And those people..." she begins.

He nods. "Would help you."

It shouldn't be so easy. But it is.

~***~

Yamashiro is a shadow ahead of him, a shadow that strikes their attackers down with a swift blade and fast feet. He follows her, fingers on the trigger, ready to shoot if her sword should miss its target. But it never does.

Later, she sits on her own while he is surrounded by his men. Her sword is drawn. Rick thinks she might be talking to it, decides not to ask and not to wonder. She might tell him if she wants to, she might not. It's not his business, either way.

She slips the sword back into its sheath, a monster going to sleep, and looks over at them. At him, Rick thinks. But she doesn't join them.

They don't talk much.

He tells her whenever he gets intel on her husband's murderers, gives her orders, explains their missions. But beyond that, there's not much between them, no connection made with words and stories and secrets shared. But she is a good fighter, and he misses the presence of her sword every time she leaves to go after the men that took so much from her; he is relieved when she returns.

There is no connection but there is a rhythm, the sound of bodies hitting the floor and weapons being drawn, her presence steady at his back. They fit together in battle, and Rick thinks he might trust her.

He doesn't trust all that many people.

But they don't talk much.

~***~

"She is a bit creepy," GQ says, eyes trained on Yamashiro

She is talking to her sword again, her words an almost familiar sound in the background, the cadence of grief some nights a lullaby for Rick's men.

Rick snorts. "A bit."

~***~

He brings her some of the food they make above the camp fire, sits down next to her to eat. They don't talk but they both look into the flames, and it's easy like this, comfortable. Ricks thinks hours pass, quiet hours, with the men and the guns sleeping, and he can't remember the last time he had a moment like this. It shouldn't matter, not in the kind of life he chose to live, and yet he is strangely grateful for it, for Yamashiro and the fire and the stars above them.

It's she who breaks the silence, her eyes distant, and Rick thinks it's not the fire she sees or the sleeping soldiers. It's something else, and it might be the husband she lost or the men she still has to kill.

“He's in the sword,” she says.

Rick blinks.

“My husband is in the sword.”

He looks at her, sees her everyday grief, and he wants to think that she's crazy, wants to think that a man can't be trapped in a blade, can be laid to rest instead. But he has seen her sword and there was something off about it, the reflections, the sound when she slid it into its sheath or into a body. There was something off and he _believes_ her.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

Yamashiro nods.

~***~

"This one," he tells her, "followed him to find out the route he took home, to work, to all the places he went regularly."

He hands her the picture, watches her. She never looks angry in those moments, never looks sad. But he knows that she will go and she will kill and he doubts that she feels much remorse, if any. He knows that she kills those men with the information he gives away, knows it and can't bring himself to care.

He hasn't been a good guy for so long now.

“Next mission is in nine days. We'll meet at the airport,” he says.

Yamashiro nods.

Rick doesn't watch her leave.

~***~

Nine days later, and she isn't there.

Yamashiro has never been late before, had been as predictable as his own shadow following him when it came to joining the team once she had her kill. But it's been nine days and she isn't there.

Waller sends them on their merry way anyway. And he goes, of course he does. He wouldn't know what else to do. But he keeps on catching himself as he looks for Yamashiro during the mission, expects her to be right behind him, sword drawn and face blank.

But she isn't, and it screws with his mind a little, that worry eating at him during a fire-fight, the tap-tap-tap of the gunshots not loud enough to drown out the voice that tells him that she is dead. And she can't be dead.

It's strange that he didn't quite know how much he cared before.

"Find her," Waller tells him after the mission.

"We leave no man and no woman behind," she says.

It's a lie, there are the bodies of the dead rotting away in some forsaken places, the bodies of the living starving among their enemies. Waller never cared about the sad myths soldiers hold on to, using them to make sense of the horror they walk into, the horror they bring back home with them. Yamashiro is a tool, and Waller isn't willing to lose it.

He nods anyway and he is on his way.

~***~

Rick goes after Yamashiro on his own.

He gets intel from his people, just like she did so many times, and he starts where she vanished. It's a dark alley, a familiar sight, and Rick isn't surprised. He follows her trail; a half circle of blood in a ruined building as if somebody brought down a sword, a scared cashier who speaks of a demon and can only mean Yamashiro. Rumors and bruises on criminals, her discarded bag at a hotel and her image on a surveillance video. It takes him days but he finds her.

They put her in a cage, and he thinks he will kill them for it.

Rick is hiding behind boxes in an open gangway above her, a decaying factory building stretching out around them. Yamashiro is bleeding from a head-wound, and her shirt is bloody as well. It confuses him. Yamashiro would never let anyone close enough to hurt her like that.

Yamashiro would never let anyone cage her.

He edges closer, leans against the railing. Waits. Time passes like that, Rick watching the men beneath him, watching Yamashiro. Waiting for the right moment. It comes when more men arrive, Yamashiro's guards distracted for a moment.

He hits the railing, one, two, three, four times. Yamashiro looks up. Sees him. Rick ducks into the shadows again. Moments later, he returns to his earlier spot, taking in the scene. Everything looks like it did before, a bored guard in front of Yamashiro's cage, a group of men sitting together in a corner. They didn't notice him.

When Yamashiro looks up again, he raises an eyebrow at her. She shakes her head, stretches out an arm, palm flat. He is supposed to wait. For a sign, he guesses, not from God but from her. He nods. He can do that.

He sits down close to the edge, hidden from the men but close enough that he only needs to lean to the side to check on Yamashiro. He sees her move sometimes, her hands against the bars of her cage, a small knife in them, and he knows her well enough to realise that she found a weak point, a spot to work on right under the eyes of the people thinking they are holding her prisoner. He smiles.

They spend a day like this. It's exhausting in a tired and boring and tense way, his legs cramping up, his mouth going dry. He’d finished the water he brought with him a while ago, he thinks Yamashiro hadn't any for quite a while. Still, he knows she's ready for whatever she is planning. It's his job to be as well.

A few hours later, _he_ is there. The man Yamashiro came to kill, the man Rick expected to be dead already. A more difficult target than usual, it seems, and Rick is glad he is there, glad that he can help Yamashiro with that. It's what he promised her months ago, after all.

He checks up on her again, catches a glimpse of her face. She looks livid, just for a split second, fury personified, and he thinks that the man standing in front of her cage will die an ugly death, will die painfully. He's not supposed to be happy about that. But maybe he is. There is a man trapped in a sword, after all.

He waits for her sign, knows it won't be a sleight of her hand, won't be a trick. There is no space and time like that in this building, has never been in moments like this. When the man steps close to Yamashiro, Rick stands up slowly, quietly, and stretches.

Rick hears him talk, thinks he might be mocking Yamashiro. He pulls his gun, looks down on them again. When Yamashiro pushes against the bars and they simply give in, he fires. Then, things are going their way for a while. He kills three of the men easily, wounds another one, and he knows that Yamashiro is out of the cage, sees her as a flurry of punches and kicks among the men. Her target is running. Rick goes after him.

Outside, the day hits him with sunlight, and he stumbles, disoriented for a few seconds. Yamashiro is behind him, an angry shadow, and he quickly checks her over before turning around, looking for her target, their target now. Yamashiro sees him first. When she starts running again, Rick follows.

Later, he will think that things would have gone differently if they had been just a few seconds faster, a tiny bit better. Later, he will go through every second of the mission, every step, and he will wonder what exactly went wrong.

But now they are running, they're fast, and they're gaining on the man, and Rick thinks they will catch him, thinks that he could shoot him easily but the kill should be Yamashiro's. It's an old-fashioned way of thinking, impractical, but he doesn't pull the trigger, he just runs.

Then, there are the helicopters, men in kevlar spilling out of them, and for a couple of seconds Rick thinks the man has back-up, thinks they will be in trouble until he realises that he knows these men, has led them before, and he doesn't quite understand what they are doing there. 

They go for the man, and Rick knows with sudden certainty that they are not there to help Yamashiro and him. They are here for Waller. She played him, used him to find Yamashiro and with her the target, she's in it for whatever information he has and not for Yamashiro's revenge. And Rick made it easier to find them.

Yamashiro won't get to kill him.

~***~

Yamashiro is on the ground, and somebody is pointing a gun at Rick. For a moment, for the smallest bit of time, Rick stands still and breathes.

He sees it then, sees how it's going to happen: Waller will hide away this man from Yamashiro, will never give him up. Because he has information and he knows how to play the game, and because he is worth something alive and worth nothing dead. Rick sees it and he sees Yamashiro rage against the drugs they used on her, against the people holding her back. He sees it.

Rick moves again.

He picks up her sword, feels the weight of it and its purpose, and he walks to where Yamashiro can't go right now, silent and swift. They don't see him coming, they don't expect him to, and it's easier than it's supposed to be. He'll have to train them harder if they want to survive someone other than him in the battles to come.

The blade glides easily between the man's ribs, and Rick realizes that he’s already forgotten his name, doesn't care about his name, just cares about doing what Yamashiro can't do in this moment, cares because she and Rick sat together by the fire one night. It shouldn't be reason enough to kill a man, can't be reason enough, but the man dies at Rick's feet anyway.

~***~

Waller puts him in a cell for a week. It's a warning, he guesses, a punishment. But it's been so many days since he had some time for himself, so he stretches out on the bed and he closes his eyes against the grey and the decay. He sleeps.

When he's awake, he counts minutes and punches against the sand-sack they put into his cell. He sees bits of the sunrise through a small window, but he misses out on the sunset. He doesn't think about time passing. 

He is a soldier, he's good at waiting.

Tatsu visits him once, pounds one, two, three, four times against the door to get his attention. "Did you get your sword back?" he asks her.

Tatsu nods.

"Good."

They're silent, then, silent and still, before he speaks again. "You don't owe me your life or some shit like that now, do you?"

Rick thinks, that somebody else, anybody else, would have smiled at his question. Tatsu only shakes her head. She stays for a while, a calm presence on the other side of the wall, and it's almost nice, almost something.

"Waller will let me go," he tells her at some point.

She nods. "I'll wait for you."

He hadn't expected anything else.


End file.
